


Speech and Therapy

by HapaxLegomenon



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Diego Hargreeves is Bad at Feelings, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Baggage, Gen, Injury Recovery, Post-Canon, Sibling Bonding, Stuttering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 11:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18387821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HapaxLegomenon/pseuds/HapaxLegomenon
Summary: When Allison pulls the lid off her marker, Diego snatches the notepad from her other hand and holds it over his head. “Ah ah,” he says. “I saidsayit.”Allison won’t ask for help in regaining her voice, and Diego doesn’t know how to offer it. In the end, it’s clumsy, and aggressive, but they figure it out.





	Speech and Therapy

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in a post-S1 canon where Vanya destroyed the house and theatre, but they managed to calm her down without causing the lunar cataclysm and therefore the rest of the apocalypse was averted

Diego’s limping back to his room after a night of working the streets, intent on a nap and maybe waking Vanya to help him stitch up the gash in his thigh, when he hears something that stops him in his tracks. For one wild second he thinks that Five’s screwing with him, somehow, that he’s been teleported back in time from Allison’s house in Los Angeles to the hellhole they called a childhood home. Again.

“My n--,” he hears, in a hoarse, scratching voice. “Nn. Na--” The sounds choke off, and he hears a long, frustrated exhalation. “N...ame. My name is A--” Another abrupt cut.

“Shit,” Allison croaks.

God, Diego really doesn’t want to deal with this. He absolutely, positively does not want to deal with this after a night where he’d lost two of his knives and taken more hits than he’d ever admit _and_ the perp had gotten away. He really doesn’t need to confront any more of his weaknesses tonight, thanks.

But his stupid conscience, in a voice that sounds just like Eudora’s, says, “She’s your sister, Diego.”

“Dammit,” he mutters, letting his eyes close for a brief moment. He shakes his head, resists the urge to hit a wall, and ducks into his room to swap his harness for a first aid kit.

Allison’s door is ajar, and swings slowly open when he taps it with his knuckles. She stares up at him, first in surprise, then with a more pointed look after a glance to the alarm clock on her nightstand, which declares that it’s barely past 4:00 am.

He bristles. “Hey, it’s not like I’m the only one awake right now,” he says defensively, which is true. Their whole family keeps weird, incongruous hours-- Five is in and out of the house at all hours of the day and night, and like Diego, Klaus is practically nocturnal when left to his own devices. Luther is the complete opposite and quite possibly a monster, because Diego knows that he goes to bed early and gets up around this time every morning to work out. Allison, the movie star, is used to running on rotating schedules and is almost as much of a caffeine fiend as Five. Vanya’s the closest thing to normal out of the six of them, which is ironic. Diego has no idea what Ben does; he’ll have to ask Klaus later.

They’ve been trying to make a point to eat lunch together, because family dinner has a fraught history, and Luther gave up four days into trying to enforce a breakfast schedule. It’s going as well as could be expected. They’re trying.

_DO YOU NEED SOMETHING?_ Allison writes in her notebook. She’s a good actress; nowhere on her face can Diego see any of the frustration that comes from having words stuck in your mouth. Allison is hiding and hell if Diego knows how to broach the subject, so instead he holds up the first aid kit. “I could use a steady hand,” he says, and gestures to his leg.

Allison’s eyes go wide when she sees the wound, still seeping blood into the sluggish, dark stain on his black pants. He should probably think about carrying bandages with him, but that would ruin the image. Probably cheaper than paying to clean Allison’s expensive rug, though. She makes a quick ‘come here’ gesture and points at a hard-backed chair, and Diego can’t quite manage to hide his wince at he sits, stretching his leg gingerly in front of him.

“It’s not that bad,” he says, which is a lie. The cut hurts like a bitch and is ragged to boot, because apparently Diego is the only person in the world who cares about keeping his knives sharp. A sharp knife means a cleaner, deeper cut. Any idiot should know that.

Allison gives him a skeptical look and pulls a fistful of alcohol wipes from the kit. It burns, and Diego clenches his jaw hard enough that his teeth squeak.

“I don’t need that,” he says, when she shakes the bottle of Tylenol. He’s tough; painkillers are for the weak. He doesn’t need that shit in his body. Allison’s eye roll shows what she thinks of that, but then she points at his eyes and towards the wall. It’s an easy enough gesture to understand; Diego swallows his apprehension and looks away.

The tell-tale pinch of the needle in his thigh makes him woozy, but he breathes through it, long breaths in and slow, easy out. He doesn’t say anything as Allison stitches him up, not entirely sure that he could speak even if he wanted to, until she tapes a square of gauze over the wound and taps his knee.

“Thanks,” he says, and she wipes her hands on the hem of his shirt and pats his cheek. “Look, uh,” he starts as Allison stands up. She pauses and waits, eyebrows up, as Diego tries to choose the right words. He knows what it’s like when they get stuck, when there’s something in the base of your throat that keeps them inside. He feels like he should say something reassuring, but it’s hard; the silence drags, and he gives up, instead asking, “See you at lunch?”

Allison’s lips quirk into a half-smile. _DON’T LET THAT GET INFECTED,_ she writes.

“Please.”

 

☂

 

This would be a whole lot easier if Allison would just ask for his help, Diego thinks, a little unfairly. Sure, he has a lot of experience with learning to use his voice, but he’s never exactly made it a welcome topic of conversation. In fact, since they were kids, Diego’s cultivated an expectation that nobody is allowed to mention his stutter, family or not. It’s an advantage of being good with knives; he only has to threaten once. Luther still has a scar on his upper arm that even Dad’s fucked up serum couldn’t erase.

He hasn’t heard Allison trying to speak since that early morning, days ago, and she acts like she’s perfectly content to communicate through the myriad notebooks that pop up around her home like mushrooms. They’re all acutely aware that the lack of effective communication in their family almost caused the literal end of the world, so they’re making an effort to do better. Which doesn’t always work, but Diego is quick to make sure they listen to Klaus who makes sure they listen to Ben, and Five asks Vanya for her opinion, and Luther keeps his eyes on Allison so that they know when she has something to say. So, it’s not perfect, but they do their best to believe that trying makes a difference.

Diego’s not convinced. There are few things in life more frustrating than not being able to say what you want to say, and the fact that Allison is acting like it’s fine, like all of this is okay and she’s totally fine with being functionally mute-- it’s starting to grind his gears. Diego suffered for his right to speak. He was forbidden from giving interviews until they were fifteen, banned along with Klaus for fear of bringing embarrassment upon the Umbrella Academy. Can’t let Number Two ruin their picture-perfect reputation with something as pedestrian as a speech impediment. No, let Number One spout off a script about heroism and nobility, let Number Three charm the world with her silver tongue. Not Number Two, though. Not until he learned to _spit it out, Number Two._

She’s acting like none of that matters and it isn’t okay. And the longer Diego thinks about it, the more annoyed he gets.

It starts, as many things do, with an argument. Over where to go for lunch.

“I want Italian,” Klaus says in the irritating whine he never grew out of, “and so does Ben.”

Ben is nowhere to be seen, which makes it about a fifty-fifty chance that Ben actually agrees with Klaus. Diego’s bet is that Ben doesn’t care, because, “Ben can’t eat, he doesn’t get a vote.”

Both Klaus and Vanya look offended. And Diego doesn’t care about _that,_ because they’ve been talking about this for forty-five minutes and he’s hungry. He’s tempted to just leave and grab a wrap somewhere, but last time he tried that, everyone other than Five had accused him of not being a team player. Ridiculous.

“Italian would be fine,” Vanya offers in a voice that still skews quiet. “Although I’d be okay with just grabbing something from the taco truck and coming home. Five?”

Diego’s fingers itch for his knives. Maybe he’ll skewer them all and call it kebabs and then they’ll be happy. Democracy is all well and good but if they don’t come to a decision soon he’s going to snap.

Allison scribbles something on her notepad, and Luther peers over her shoulder to read it. “Allison says,” he starts, and Diego whips a couch cushion at his face.

“She can speak for herself,” he says, feeling the way the words want to stick in his throat.

“Dude,” Klaus says, “chill.” The muscles at the top of Diego’s neck tense and he feels it travel up the sides of his jaw and he glares. Klaus holds up his hands and shrugs, then his eyes focus on the empty space to his right and he grins at something nobody else can hear. Diego’s tempted to tell Ben to shut up.

Allison glares, too, at Diego, eyebrows down and lips pinched, and she holds up her notepad.

_I’M GOOD WITH ITALIAN,_ she’s written, and in quicker, messier script underneath that, _DON’T BE A DICK DIEGO._

He exhales hard through his teeth. “Whatever,” he mutters, imagining the taste of it and the careful shape of the ‘w’. “I’ll be outside when somebody finally makes a damn decision.”

His stomping bootsteps echo on the old hardwood, not quite loud enough to drown out the sound of Klaus muttering, “What crawled up his butt?”

Allison has an ornamental pond with a fountain of a mermaid, because of course she does, and Diego takes a moment to blow off steam by throwing pebbles into the mermaid’s mouth. When the pebbles land, the stream of water stutters for a moment, then spits the pebbles out to fall into the pond.

It doesn’t actually make him feel any better.

“We’re going,” Five says behind him, and Five is lucky that Diego’s used to him popping up out of nowhere by now because he almost put a rock through his brother’s eye. Being around Five does awful things to his battle-tested reflexes. After the tendons in his hands unclench, Diego lets the pebble fall to the ground at his feet. He feels Five watching him with that unnervingly sharp gaze of his, and Diego ignores that by making a universal gesture of, ‘well?’

“Klaus won,” Five says, shoving his hands into his tailored pockets and smiling. It’s the same smile he uses when he’s pretending to be a harmless little kid. It’s creepy as shit. “He’s very pleased with himself.”

“I bet,” Diego mutters. Then, he winces. “He’s riding with us, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yes.”

Diego loves his brothers-- or likes them a little bit, at least-- but he’s not convinced that he can make it through driving a celebratory Klaus around without crashing them all into the side of a building. He fishes his keys out of his pocket and tosses them easily into Five’s hand.

Five rolls the keys in his palm and whistles. “Wow. Klaus was right, you really are off tonight.” When Diego takes an angry breath, Five holds up his hand, mimicking Klaus’s placating gesture from earlier. “Hey,” he says, “not my problem.”

“Damn right,” Diego says.

His black mood persists through the drive to the restaurant. Klaus sings along to the radio even when Five tries to turn it off, which isn’t really helping, but it’s not the source of his mood, either. Nor is it really fair that when Klaus turns to the back seat and communicates that Ben wants to know if he’s okay, Diego tells them both to fuck off.

“Touchy,” Five murmurs without looking away from the road. Diego scowls at the back of his head and Klaus laughs.

 

☂

 

Allison tracks him down after lunch, once they’ve all survived the family outing and dispersed throughout the house again. He’s in the middle of ruining the bullseye of an old dart board when she knocks on the wall to get his attention and gives him a ‘we need to talk’ look.

“What do you want, Allison?” he asks, trying to sound nonchalant about it.

She flips back in her notebook to a page marked with a neon yellow sticky tab. _WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?_ it reads. Diego’s seen that page many times before. He throws his knife without looking, knowing it’ll scrape up next to the others in the little red circle.

“Who says I have a problem?” It’s almost as much of a stock response as the pre-written question, and she rolls her eyes and flips to the newest page, which still says, _DON’T BE A DICK DIEGO_.

A spike of anger flares up somewhere between his lungs. Leaving the knives, he stalks up to Allison. She doesn’t flinch at his approach-- nobody in this family does, anymore-- instead staring him down with the steely intensity that outsiders never see of their precious Number Three.

Diego takes a breath and keeps his voice steady. “How ‘bout you say something original for a change, huh?” The ‘m’ wants to stick but he doesn’t let it, and the vindictive part of him feels a moment of satisfaction at the brief flicker of hurt in his sister’s face before anger covers it. His own angry little fire rises in reaction, and when Allison pulls the lid off her marker, he snatches the notepad from her other hand and holds it over his head in a way that would be childish if he thought about it for too long.

“Ah ah,” he taunts. “I said _say_ it.”

Allison freezes for a moment with an expression of gobsmacked surprise, then snarls and shoves at his chest. She thrusts her hand forward, open-palmed and aggressive and very clearly communicating that he had better give back her notebook, or else.

He doesn’t. “Say it,” he repeats, and just stretches his arm higher when she scowls and tries to reach around him. She makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat, something like a muffled honk, but makes no attempt at an actual word. Which is stupid. Diego knows she can do it. She knows she can do it. But if she won’t risk not being perfect in front of Diego, of all people, she’s never going to speak again, and that’s completely unacceptable. “Exhale,” he orders, “slowly.”

Allison blinks, and Diego can see the exact moment that realization dawns on her face, the way her mouth opens just slightly and her eyes flicker to the side. She’s still furious, that much is obvious, but she drops her outstretched hand, clenches it into a fist. “Give it,” she manages to squeak, breathy and quiet, before her voice fails.

Diego lets himself smirk slightly. He cups his hand around his ear like a cartoon villain. “Sorry, what was that?”

Allison’s scowl deepens and she tries again. “Give--” she starts, louder, then cuts off with a wince. Her fingers flutter to the scar on her throat.

“Don’t force it,” Diego suggests. “Slow. Speak on the exhale.” Passive airflow was never really his favourite technique, but it’s all about relaxing the vocal cords. Focus and control; he figures that might be exactly what she needs.

Allison stares up at him and takes a deliberate breath in, then out through her mouth, then in again. Diego finds himself breathing with her and nodding. “Good. Try again.”

“Give it back.”

Her voice is hoarse and cracked and trails off into breathlessness at the end, but it’s there. A full sentence. Diego finds the beginnings of a smile on his face despite himself. “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” he mocks, and hands Allison her notebook.

She stomps on his toes. He yelps, but doesn’t try to retaliate. He probably deserved that.

Allison stands and glares, flipping the marker between her fingers like she’s trying to decide what to say next. After a moment, she sets the notepad and marker down on a uselessly small side table, and reaches for his wrist. Diego tenses slightly, but she doesn’t try to hug him or flip him over her shoulder or anything; she just holds on, loose but firm, and looks at him with bright, determined eyes. She inhales. “What-- what else?”

Diego breathes.

 

☂

 

They don’t let the others know about what they’re doing, because Allison is Allison and everything has to be perfect before anyone gets to see, which is fine with Diego. He has a reputation to maintain. Klaus notices the improvement in his mood and makes a mocking comment about it, which immediately ruins Diego’s good mood and earns Klaus a smack upside the head courtesy of Allison and her notepad. Five smirks in a way that suggests he has them figured out, but then again, Five usually looks like that. They meet together in the evening, when Luther’s in bed and Vanya is done practicing for the day, and Allison checks on his stitches and makes tea and Diego pretends that he doesn’t hate tea.

They learn that Allison struggles most with words and sounds from the back of her throat, which makes sense. She breezes through the ‘m’s and ‘b’s that have always been Diego’s nemesis, but sometimes the ‘g’s and ‘a’s get stuck on the ragged edges of her scars.

“Picture the word,” Diego reminds her, and memories of Mom swamp over him and threaten to drown all of his words in a tide of loss. “P--”

“It’s okay,” Allison says, with her hand on his knee and sympathy in her face. He hates it. He doesn’t want pity from her or anyone else and he shakes his head, jerky with misdirected anger.

Another night, he’s reminding her to slow down, to time the words with her breath and keep the gaps between them small, when she clenches her jaw in frustration and says, “This is a--” she pauses, swallows, continues, “a lot to remember.”

And Diego rolls his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, with no small measure of sarcasm, “no shit.” Then it’s his turn to pause and take a breath, to remember the shape of an ‘h’ in his mouth. “It’s hard work. I didn’t just grow out of it.”

She looks guilty, as if he’s pulled out her exact assumption. He can’t be angry about it, because after all, he did that on purpose. He’s spent his life doing everything in his power to keep his blocks and his weaknesses to himself so that nobody, not Luther or the paparazzi or anyone else can use it against him. Maintaining his image and his body is constant work, constant effort, and this is just a part of that.

“I didn’t know,” Allison says, and Diego interrupts her.

“I didn’t want you to.” He wants to smack the understanding look off her face, but even on his worst day, he couldn’t hit his sister. More’s the pity; god knows both of them deserve it sometimes. “I’m pretty damn good at making sure you don’t,” he adds, unable to keep the challenge out of his voice.

She just nods and being the bigger person, doesn’t rise to the bait. There’s a thrumming in Diego’s chest as he waits for her to react, expects her to say, Diego, we should talk about this, but she just goes back to practicing, honeyed tea soothing her rough voice, and Diego cups the fluttering feeling in his rib cage like a bird. It’s soft, rather than angry, and he doesn’t know what to do with that.

Allison rehearses specific conversations, the kind of heavy, emotional conversations that make Diego’s skin crawl. Sooner than later, it gets to be too much-- there’s only so many times he can hear Allison telling the idea of their sister that I love you, Vanya, only so long he can try not to think about what it would be like to love someone so much that being away from them is like their heart is crying, like Allison tells a phantom Claire over and over. He hears her, and tries so, so hard not to think of Eudora. Not to think of Mom.

By now, Allison can say the words just fine. Sure, there are still starts and stutters and squeaks, but that’s only going to go away with time. They may have more time left than they’d thought, but in the aftermath of the not-Apocalypse, every one of them is painfully, acutely aware that it could run out any second.

“You gotta just go for it,” Diego says finally, when he can’t take it anymore. Allison starts to shake her head, but Diego grabs her by the shoulders and looks her in the eyes. “Hey. I’m serious. You got this. The longer you put it off the harder it’s gonna get, trust me.” She blinks, a slight frown between her eyebrows. Diego remembers practicing for hours, don’t move don’t move don’t move, the words getting gummed up in his head and mouth until he couldn’t speak at all, until he’d said them so many times that the fear of getting it wrong was overwhelming and by the time it mattered, he couldn’t even open his mouth. “You just gotta breathe and go for it.”

He goes along for moral support on Allison’s insistence, when she picks up the phone and has a breathlessly happy conversation with her daughter for the first time since before the not-Apocalypse. She holds the phone in one hand and squeezes Diego’s wrist with the other, so tight that he feels his joints crack. And then again when Allison finds Vanya and assures her that look, I’m fine, we’re both fine, and they hold each other in tearful apologies that make Diego’s throat close up even when he looks away.

He draws the line at Luther. That’s a conversation he definitely doesn’t need to hear.

And Allison finds him again later, after another marginally successful family get together over dumplings, this time, in which Allison’s voice had been just as present as anybody else’s and everyone stopped to listen to what she had to say. She gestures with a pair of narrow scissors at the stitches in his thigh, and he does his best not to get light-headed from the queasy sensation of thread moving through skin.

“Diego,” she says, in a voice that’s strong and confident and makes his chest fill with unsteady pride. She takes his hand and doesn’t let go when he reflexively pulls away, she waits while he suffers through his allergies to needles and emotions and finally meets her eyes. “You gave me my voice back.”

He shakes his head. “No,” he pushes past the lump in his throat. “No, you did it yourself. I just helped you a little.” She wipes alcohol over the healing scar. It’s small and neat already, from the benefit of Allison’s tidy stitchwork, and doesn’t reopen when he flexes the muscle in his leg.

She covers it with a bandage anyway, a rectangle of white to keep it safe. Protected. “I was scared, and you--”

“Don’t, Allison,” he pleads, “c’mon. Can’t we just shake hands and go, or something?” His face is burning and he wishes wildly that he was anywhere but here, his hands sweating and a complex cocktail of happiness and embarrassment and pride making his head swim.   

“Oh my god, just shut up and let me thank you,” Allison says, exasperated and rolling her eyes.

She makes him keep the bandage on for another week, which would normally be irritating, but for some reason, Diego finds he doesn’t mind, this time.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve done a bit of research, but my knowledge on stuttering and speech therapy strategies is limited at best, so please pardon any glaring errors -- or, if you can, direct me to some good reading on the subject.
> 
> >>[Twitter](https://twitter.com/paxlegomenon)


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